WTF Blog Clutter: Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Ugly Blog Themes

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In honor of my ongoing series on WTF Blog Design Clutter, I’d like to celebrate with a Twitter quote from NctrnlBst of Baker’s Hours:

@lorelleonwp where would I be without you? Friends don’t let friends use ugly blog themes. ? LOL

@lorelleonwp I believe the exact words were “coyote butt ugly” lol

Twitter comment from Nctrlbst on friends don't let friends use ugly themes

Just as friends don’t let friends drive drunk, do you have the courage to not let your friends host an ugly blog theme?

In this season of thankfulness, forgiveness, and festival honesty, why not tell your friends their blog designs suck? [Read more…]

WTF Blog Design Clutter: Incoming Feed Clutter

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Yesterday, we looked at the clutter that can be found on many blogs for visually displaying outgoing feed information. Today, let’s explore the clutter of incoming feeds as part of the WTF Blog Design Clutter series.

With the ease of adding incoming feeds to your blog through widgets, bloggers are stuffing their sidebars with incoming feeds. Incoming feeds have become the next generation blogroll. Like the long blogroll lists, these incoming feeds can quickly get out of control.

At first, this made sense. If you want to recommend specific blogs and content, then having a feed or feed aggregator in your blog’s sidebar acted like a scrolling ticker blogroll in a way, giving your readers more options to explore. Unfortunately, many bloggers found too many visitors were finding the help they needed on those incoming feed links, clicking away instead of digging in deeper to their own blogs.
[Read more…]